Making Discoveries With the New and Improved AncestryDNA Match List | Ancestry

hi everyone Costa cow here with episode of the barefoot genealogist today's topic is making discoveries with the new and improved ancestry DNA match list a few months ago at Ruth's Tech we announced that we were updating the DNA match list at the time everybody was given the option to opt in to participate in the beta if they so chose we're getting ready to launch it soon and so I wanted to make sure to put together a video to give you an overview of all of the parts and pieces of the new updated match list to highlight some of the changes that we've made at your request because we've been listening to those of you who've been using it and to the feedback that you've been giving us which is fantastic and I also wanted to just share with you my methods for how I'm using the new tools to manage all of my DNA matches and the discoveries that I'm making now you don't have to do it the way that I'm doing it but hopefully it'll spark some ideas to help you develop a system that'll work for you now before we dive into today's content I just want to give you a few quick reasons why I love the DNA match list now there's a lot of reasons why people take the ancestry DNA test but when you start digging into your matchless there's some reasons that become really clear about how it can benefit you I'll share some of mine maybe some of those will resonate with you first I love that DNA matches provide me with additional evidence that the ancestors in my family tree are really my ancestors so it allows me to put together those pieces and add that genetic evidence to the documentary evidence that I've been collecting for years in my family tree and it helps me to feel more confident that I'm finding my own family tree and not somebody else's that I haven't just erroneously attached to Ron set of parents somewhere in my tree and gone off on a tangent so the DNA evidence helps me to do that and that DNA evidence comes through those DNA matches another reason why I love the DNA match list is because it provides me with new pieces of evidence new pieces of evidence provide me with clues to discover ancestors behind those brick walls in my family tree okay I have brick walls hopefully you do too I'm feel very alone in that so so most of us probably have some kind of brick wall or another sometimes they're close in sometimes they're a little bit further out in our family tree but as we look at our DNA matches and start to figure out who they are and organize that match list a little bit you're gonna find that there's information that will lead you to the identity of the people on the other side of that brick wall reason number three why I love the DNA match list is because it allows me to make connections with living cousins people who might have a piece of the family story people that I can help figure out how they fit into my family how I can learn how I fit into theirs and it's a little bit like putting a giant puzzle together and in some cases I've developed some really great relationships with people that have allowed me to share discoveries with them and stories and even photos of the ancestors that I've never seen before I'm named after my great-grandmother she died when my grandfather was about 2 or 3 years old and so I never knew her my mom never knew her own grandmother but I named after her and I grew up hearing stories of her and because of one of my DNA matches I know have a photo of her as a child that I never would have found probably any other way he just got interested in in family history and took a DNA test and we were connected as as closest cousins and that started a relationship and some communication that ended up in us sharing a lot of really great information and stories and this really precious photograph so those are the three reasons why I let the DNA match list I don't know why you use the DNA match list or what you're trying to discover but my guess is it probably fits in one of those three categories if it's something entirely different that's great leave a comment I'd love to hear what your reasons are now with that discussion about the DNA max list let's go ahead and dive into the new match list the changes that we've made and how they're going to help you make even more discoveries okay as we start our discussion about the new ancestry DNA match list the first thing that you need to know is that as of the record this video nearly 15 million people have taken the ancestry DNA test combined with that there are hundred million family trees on ancestry what that means is that we're able to make about 11 billion different connections between all of the people in the information there in our network now that's really great news because what it means is that almost everyone who takes a DNA test with ancestry is going to be able to make some kind of discovery in fact random statistic the average ancestry DNA user has about 50,000 DNA matches that's 50,000 opportunities to make a new discovery so let's go over some quick basics about how to make sure you're set up so that you get the best use out of your watchlist so the first thing is you have to have taken of course an ancestry DNA test and/or have manager or contributor access to the test results of a family member then you need to have a family tree online and ancestry now you don't have to have this to participate in ancestry DNA but if you want to get the most out of your experience having a public or private searchable family tree online is going to be really useful to help you and your matches make new discoveries then you want to have your DNA results attached in your family tree to the person who took the test now if you're not sure if you've done this correctly just go to your DNA home page click on settings and look at the family tree linking section you want to make sure that it's linked to the right tree you want to make sure it's linked to the right person in the tree so it's going to be the person who took the test okay now with that let's take a look at the new match page so I privatized some information trying to respect the privacy of my family members most of my immediate family has given me permission to share their information and some of their match list information but I've tried to privatize it where I can just respect their privacy a little bit so this is the new match list for those of you who have not yet opted into the beta this might look a little bit different than it did before up here in the top right hand corner you're gonna see the little beta switch and so you can toggle that on and off to see the new versus the old if you want to compare them I went to the new I switched over to beta actually before it stick and have not switched back because all of the tools that I need are available right here and there were a couple of tweaks that have been made along the way since routes check since we made the announcement and hopefully you'll catch on to those those have all been based on feedback we've been getting from you and those like you who have been using the new maps list so the the beta switches up here on the top corner right underneath that there's a little link to the maps if those of you who used that before to see where your DNA matches were in the world that that's kind of an interesting interactive to be able to see it at that level up here on the top left you're gonna see your test picker that's kind of a funny phrase but basically what it means is if you have access to tests other than your own you can click on that it'll give you a drop-down list and you can switch back and forth between the match lists of the different tests that you have access to you so that's kind of exciting okay then down here you're gonna see some new filters and new ways to view your match list so you're gonna have this all matches drop-down menu you're gonna have this add a filter drop down menu and then just like before you're gonna have this search box and that's gonna pop open a search up some search options we're not going to talk much about that stakes I really want to focus on these two new filters okay let's actually start with the filters so when you click that add a filter button you're going to get this little drop down menu that's gonna allow you to filter your match list by any one of these options the top option there on that list is common ancestors we'll talk more about that in just a minute the next option is match as you haven't viewed yet now if you remember from the old match list we call those the blue dot matches okay basically any time a match is added to your which happens when someone new takes a test and they come up as a DNA match to you they have a little blue dot on them as soon as you view that match or view the match compare page then the blue dot goes away now there is one change with the new match list system and that is that the blue dots are not resettable that's kind of a funny concept so in the old match list you could view a match but then you could reset the blue dot if you wanted to pretend that you hadn't seen it before or use the blue dot as a type of filter but because we have so many new filters we have made that fixed which means you can't reset the blue dot anymore then don't despair I'll show you the ways to do something even cooler here in just a minute the next filter that you've got there is for people that you have messaged so that's other matches that you have either sent or received messages to or from and that's a really great way to find some of those people you've communicated with really quickly unless you're the kind of person who sends out hundreds of messages in which case that might be a little less informative next is the notes so those of you who didn't know you always could leave notes on your match page you still can and now we've added that as one of the ways you can filter your matchless down to those matches on whom you have left a note next on the list is those with private linked trees so you can filter your list by that by those with public link to trees or by those with unlinked trees now it strongly encourage you if you have an unlinked tree to go ahead and link it and if you see a match with an unlinked tree might want to shoot them a message and invite them to link it as well now one other thing to be aware of is that with the new match list those notes that you make are now visible directly on the match list or at least the first 60 characters or so are so that's really a great improvement that came about because of feedback that we got from our community the other thing that you need to know because there's been a little bit of confusion about this as I've participated in some of the Facebook groups and looked at some of the feedback that's been coming in is that you do not need to have an ancestry subscription in order to send or receive messages to or from your matches so if you don't have a subscription that's just fine you can still send messages to your DNA matches and if your DNA matches do not have a subscription they do not need one to get a message from you or to respond to that message so message away okay okay next let's talk about groups so filters are under that second button they're match groups are under this first button here now before I dive into talk about the match groups I think what I need to do is probably introduce you to my tree so that you can understand how I've set up my match groups now like I said at the beginning you can design whatever method you think is going to work best for you I'm gonna share the method that I used and hopefully if you haven't got a method yet or if you're looking for inspiration to design your own method this will help so the first thing that you need to know is that in my family tree I've color-coded it based on my eight great-grandparents so I did it in the order of the rainbow red orange yellow green blue there's no indigo heart emoji that's a whole other issue so red orange yellow green blue indigo violet and pink another way that I did this is kind of silly so basically what I did was I went out on the internet and I looked for colored heart emojis emojis just like you use when you text message and then I copied and pasted those into the suffix field of the names for each of these people in my tree so I did that just so that I can have a quick glance I also have a printed copy of this hanging in the wall of my desk so that I can remember but then also as I've just worked with it over it over time and because I did it in the order of the rain and I've known that since I was a child I learned a song about it in kindergarten right that I'm not gonna sing then that means that I've got I I always know that my father's father's father is red and my mother's mother's mother is pink and my father's mother's mother is green because I've just been doing this long enough and when you spend enough time with your tree and with your matches you'll start to know those things too so I did it in the order of the rainbow so that I could remember the order in my tree you some people have done shades of blue for their father in shades of pink for their mother some people have done light colors and dark colors like there's all sorts of options and the reason there are all sorts of options is because in your DNA match list we have given you 24 different colors to work with so here's how I've divided up my matchless you come in here and you click on create custom group and when you do that it will give you the option to select one of those 24 colors and then give that color a label now in my case here's how I've done that red orange yellow green blue indigo violet pink okay what you're looking at here are the drop-down lists for each of my parents now because I've been able to test each of my parents I don't spend a whole lot of time with my own match list because I can't inherit anything they didn't give me so I spend most of my time with the match list of my two parents and so I just added those colored groups to them hopefully that makes sense so let's go back to my tree okay so here for example is my great-grandfather Frederick Cowen and he is red his parents are Cowen and Inman so if you look over here group number one is red and it's labeled the Cowan Inman group back to my tree my great-grandmother Lillian she's orange her parents are no I can't Kat it's so group number two orange Noack and Kanaks I could come down here to my great-grandfather Albert's he's purple his parents are Kerr and Neely in this case the purple group is Kurt Amelie on my mom's match list so this is my dad's match list here on the left my mom's match list on the right and that's how I created my custom hurts now you'll notice I also have some other groups that I've created I'm a happy group that's my review this group I'll tell you about that a little bit more in a minute I also have this group that I call no tree no clue that doesn't always matter sometimes even if there's no tree I have a clue and I can figure it out and I am going to do a video very soon about how I do that I did one years ago but it's gotten a little outdated so I'm going to be refreshing that but every once in a while I still come across some matches that I can't figure out you'll notice there are none zero and my mom's matchless that I haven't been able to figure out so far that don't have a tree twenty one of my dad's matchless that we're still trying to figure out so that's one of the groups I created and then I created this still need to figure it out group because I know that if I just spend enough time I probably could figure it out and it just so happens that at the time I was working on it I didn't I didn't have the time and to dig into it and I didn't want to lose it so remember how we talked earlier about those blue dots and I know a lot of you were using those blue dots as a way to mark them so that you could come back to them later well I just created this still need to figure that out group i dot him with that color and then they end up there in that group now the great thing is I can filter down to any one of these groups at any time a default filter is all matches now remember I said the average ancestry DNA test taker has about 50,000 cousin matches so my family apparently is pulling the average up just a little bit my dad has sixty 2556 matches my mom and her Southern roots and they're big families 77028 matches so this is new we have never given you your full match list account before and now you can see it and this is updated in real time so you'll be able to keep track of how many total matches you have then there's some permanent filters so these top colored filters I added these filters down here are just part of the ancestry DNA match list experience this first one here under all matches is close matches so it allows you to see how many fourth cousins and closer you have on your match list then you've got those distant matches so that's going to be those 5th through 8th cousins new matches so this is new the Blue Dot is the matches you haven't viewed yet so they're new to you but one of the things that people were asking for was how to see who the true new matches are on the old match list we allowed you to sort your match list by date and that's essentially what this does but we've labeled it new matches and what it does is it shows you the new matches for the last 7 days and then the last the week before that so you can kind of see an incredible order hidden matches so in the old match list there was a little trashcan that allowed you to trash your matches and I know a lot of people didn't want to trash their matches they just used that feature as a way to filter things out I think what they were trying to accomplish a lot of times was to get to meaningful matches faster and now with all of these filters it's a lot easier to do and so you might want to go look and see if you've got hidden matches restore them to your match list so that you can then start to add them to some of these more meaningful filter groups that you can create for yourself now some of you are going to see like over here on my mom's side you see where it says shared matches with mother by a kid shared matches with father by kid at the bottom so that's because my mother's parents have not tested now they never will because they're both deceased so those will just always sit there on my dad side my grandmother tested so he has shared matches with mother and we're really grateful that we got her tested before she passed just a few months ago and what we tested her years ago but she passed a few months ago and that we're really grateful that we were able to get her tested and so he has a shared not just with mother button but he has that aya kid for your father that again her the permanent system there so that's what those match and counts mean and then you'll notice you have accounts for each of them the very top match group is also a fixed group and that's the starred matches so for those of you using the old match list you're not gonna lose your starred matches but I'll tell you a little bit about how I use my starred matches so other besides having colored dots that allow me to tell you which branch of my family tree each of my matches connects through I use the star as a way to denote that I have completed working with this match meaning I've added them to my tree and verified the path between us and our common ancestor with additional evidence and I'm you know I've messaged them if I wanted to message them and so I'm kind of done working with it I chose to use it that way because then it allows me to see just at a single glance here I've identified for example in my dad's match list who 866 of those matches are how they fit into our family tree and I've added them to the tree so it's a great way to have for me to have a really quick glance at that information so that's how I have used the new system to create the custom groups again you just click on this all matches filter on your match list create custom groups you can create as many of them as you want and then I'll show you here in just a minute where you go to add those to your people couple of tips about this if you view a match at all assignment to at least one group that's why I like having these little extra groups review this no trees still need to figure out that way I've at least know that I've looked at the match and I've put them somewhere and they don't get lost in that you know match list of 62,000 people I would also encourage you to be consistent across the tests that you manage if you manage multiple tests design a system that allows you to be consistent so in my case I manage both of my parents match lists so you can see here I've created these colored groups but in my own match list and in the match list of my grandmother I use the exact same colors to mean the exact same thing so in my match list I have matches you know matched colored match groups one through eight of all eight colors I have the review this group I have the note regroup and they still need to figure out group when I use the same consistent colors across all three four tests myself my parents my grandmother and I also manage tests for a couple of amps at a couple of cousins and so I'm trying to be consistent across all of my tests in the colors that I use and the labels that I used for the groups so that I don't have to rethink my system every time I come to a new match list one other thing I wanted to tell you about this is that you can use both a match group and a filter at the same time so you don't have to just use one or the other I could for example look at all of the Cowan Inman matches who have an attached tree or I could look at all of my new blue dot matches who are fourth cousins or closer or any combination of those two filters the matches and filters okay let's take a look at how this looks now on the actual match list so here's my match list again and you can see we've got that all matches filter that we were just viewing the filters that we were looking at just before that and then over here you can see that I have added individuals on my match list to specific groups so I'm on my match list this here is my dad and so he gets added to the four groups that represent his four grandparents and like I mentioned there's that note feature that will show you where you add those notes but here's where they show up on your match list next is my mom you can see she's added to the four color groups that are for her grandparents and then below that we start to see my siblings so here's two of my brothers they get all eight match groups so that's an important fact which is this any single person can be added to any number of groups um I've got my siblings in all eight groups that's the most I have most people are just in one or maybe two groups but my closer relatives are going to be in more which I think makes for a colorful match list so and that's kind of fun but it becomes super useful as we dive into this a little deeper and as you get further down your match list having just that one or two colors that they're assigned to you is great so any single person can be added to any number of match groups and of course any single match group can have any number of people okay so with all of these great tools the question then becomes how am I related to all of these matches I see that question so often the first thing to just remember is you are related to them if they're on your DNA match list you share DNA so you're genetically related to these people on that match list one of the things that I forgot to point out is we've also now surfaced how much DNA you share with that person so right there under the predicted relationship you're going to see the amount of shared DNA and just next to that you're gonna see a little eye now in a minute we're going to look at a match this is a screen shot we're gonna look at a match on the actual match list and I'll click that little eye and you'll see what happens but we've surfaced that information so that you can start to see how much DNA you share with these people on your match list because the amount of DNA that you share gives you an idea of what relationship you are to that person now of course the further down the list you go the more distantly related you likely are to that person and the wider the range of possible relationships so that gets a little tricky but just wanted to let you know that we are showing that amount of shared DNA right there on the match list now so when you approach your match list and you're trying to figure out how you're related to all these people my first piece of advice is start with the matches that you know now for some of you that's super easy because you've tested some of those people you may be tested your parents or your siblings or an aunt or uncle or a first cousin so start with the matches that you know make sure that you put some notes in and I'll show you my notes here in just a minute make sure that you give them the appropriate colored dot because that's going to become really useful information when you start to figure out the matches you don't know so just like in all a family history you start with what you know and you work from the known to the unknown now for those of you who haven't tested close family members yet that is something you might want to consider if your parents are so alive or grandparents by all means get them tested if they're not still alive do you have any answer uncle's or first cousins on either side of your family having those close family members tested is going to help you start to sort out your matches between the different branches of your family tree now barring that you'll just have to figure out how you're related to some of those common or to some of those DNA matches ancestry is going to help you do some of that now we have a thing called common ancestors it's a new filter it is replacing the old shared ancestor hints and it's a little bit more robust so let me explain to you a little bit about common ancestors common ancestors are determined if you have your results attached to a public or private searchable online tree and attached to the person who took the test that's important you also need to make sure that you have complete names and birthdates of the person who took the test and their parents or grandparents now one of the things that we've been seeing is that some of you have tried to privatize your own trees so you've put in fake names or no birth date or no name or just an initial and I think some of you do that because you don't understand how the ancestry tree system works so let me just briefly explain that to you anytime you mark someone as living in your tree you'll be able to see all of their information because it's your tree but anybody else who looks at your tree will just see the word private so they won't see any other information they won't see name they won't see dates they won't see places they won't see any photos or documents you've attached to that person ancestor takes privacy really seriously and so as long as you have that person marked as living you'll be able to see the information because it's your tree nobody else will be able to see it that's important because we need to know or our computers rather need to know that the person that the DNA test is attached to is the person who took the test so you want to make sure that you add the name and birthdate of the person who took the test into the tree and their parents and/or grandparents were possible if you've done that ancestry can go to work our computers rather can go to work trying to figure out for you how you're related to some of your DNA matches so if both you and a match have your two your trees attached what we'll do first is we'll follow your tree so we'll try to look through your tree and through your majesty to see if we can find the path that connects the two of you now if both of you have the same common ancestor in your tree great we'll just show you that path just like here on the right we've got you we've got this match Lucy and we can tell from your tree that you have a common great-grandmother and Bates and we can tell you exactly what the path is between you and Lucy based on the information in your tree now let's say you didn't have an in your tree so ancestry would look at your tree and it would say oh you've got James as your father and John as your grandfather and then you don't know who John's mother is and so at that point ancestry would go out and look at the hundred million trees we have out on our site and see if we could find your grandfather in anybody else's tree and see if they know who John's father John's mother is and then we would give you a suggestion so if it's in a solid white box when you're looking at the common ancestor hints it came from your tree but if it's in this dotted translucent then it came from another tree on ancestry it may be the tree of your DNA match or it may be one of the other hundred million trees out there on ancestry and will tell you what tree it came from you can actually click on it it'll open up the tree you can see what evidence they have attached to that you can contact the tree owner see what they know about that relationship to validate that that information is actually correct so you and Lucy here in this example share DNA as a matter of fact 341 centimorgans of DNA that denotes a really close relationship and so you know you're related to Lucy the question is how are you related to Lucy and so we use tree data your tree Lucy's tree and if neither of you have the common ancestor any trees we can find out their ancestry to give you a potential path to explore to determine if that is good evidence that you and Lucy are related through this common ancestor that we're showing you hopefully that made sense if you've got questions about that like always feel free to leave comments here on the YouTube video I do watch those and respond as I can okay let's look at an example here in my tree or in my match list of one of my common ancestor hints so this is Katherine and Katherine is one of my cousins I have met her I didn't meet her until I was in my 30s I just yeah I think I was in my late thirties and she was the descendant of my great-great grandparents and it was a branch of the family tree that we had lost touch with my grandfather there's a whole story there he wanted me to find his cousins and so I did unfortunately it was after he passed but Katherine's lovely and I visited her in her hometown several times and she has given me permission to use her match page with my dad to show this information to you so this is what the new match page looks like so when you find a match on your match list and you want to view them you click to view the match and it takes you to a page that looks like so it'll show you you or in this case we're looking at my dad's match list and then the match this if I click on her name that actually will take me to her profile page now the profile page is something else that is in beta right now so you can turn that on or off so it'll show the relationship between me and Katherine this is my account and how much DNA we share if she manages any other tests that I also match I could click on that to take that to take me to that match page and then right up here where it says DNA relationship to right now it says me right krysta Cowan because it's my account I could click on that and it would show me all the other tests that I manage and I could actually go through those one at a time and see if Katherine matches any of the other tests that I also manage now I there's some other information here on this match page or on this profile page including links to her tree and her photo gallery and in this case she's chosen to share her this would be estimate with her DNA not just so I can see all of that here from her profile page I got to the profile page again by clicking on her username here in the header on the DNA match pitch now directly under her username I'm gonna see the predicted relationship now remember that relationship is predicted based on the amount of DNA that we share but there are a lot of different relationships that could be between these two individuals so directly underneath that you're gonna see the amount of shared DNA now remember I said that showed up on the DNA match list now with the little eye well if you click the whole eye it does the same thing if you click the little shared centimorgan amount we now have what we call possibility and probability charts Katherine and my dad share 390 centimorgans of DNA and this chart is created that shows all of the possible relationships between Katherine and my dad and what the probability of those relationships are so I she could be his first cousin once removed his half first cousin his great-great grandparents raised so there's lots of different possible relationships and it's important to keep in mind because sometimes we look at that predicted relationship and we think oh this person must be my first or second cousin well um families and DNA are a little bit more complicated than that so we've given you this chart to help you start to understand all of the different possibilities in this case Katherine happens to me my dad's second cousin and so while there's only a 22% probability of that as opposed to a 77% probability of one of these other relationships it just so happens that Katherine and my dad inherited more DNA than is typical for second cousins totally still within the realm of possibility however so that's exciting so that chart is available on every one of your matches either by clicking the little eye on the match list or by clicking the shared centimorgan amount here on the match compare page directly under that you're gonna see where you can add people to groups so if I click on that it pops open my group list as you can see I can add her to my starred match list I have because I have put her in my tree I can then check any one of these other color groups that I've created and add her to one of those I also can edit these groups at any time just clicking on the little pencil icon from any one of the places where that drop-down list shows up I can adjust the name of the group I can adjust the color of the group just be careful because once you've created a group or a system and you've added people to that group if you change it anywhere it changes it everywhere on that particular match list you can also delete the group but again be very careful with that because if you've added a bunch of people to that group you delete that group it goes away for everyone on that particular match list so in this case I've added Katherine to the star group because I put her in my tree I've added her to the Cowan inman group because that's the particular branch of the family tree through which she is related to us if you forget what the colors mean you don't have to click open that match list every time you just move your mouse or your pointer over the dot and you'll see a little pop-up that tells you what the label is for particular colored group so you don't have to click here and open this every time just move your mouse over that okay just below that you're going to see your notes if you click on the little note icon the new notes feature so the old notes feature used to be a pop down this is a pop out from the side so we've moved it but this puts it in the same place on the DNA match list that notes show up in your family tree so it's a consistent experience both of the naturalist now and in the family tree I'm just gonna walk you quickly through how I do my notes so in this case and I have these little colored hearts I actually that was before the colored groups came along how I color-coded things so I could remove that now because I have the dot I just haven't I put her real name and in this case for women in particular I put their maiden name what I'm doing is I'm trying to put the name by which I have them entered in my tree and because I enter all women into the tree with their maiden name that's how I enter them here also you know some of your DNA matches are gonna use user names or cryptic names or initials and you want to be able to know who they are and who they are in your tree so if you figured that out go ahead and put that right there in the notes so that you can find them in your tree the next thing I put into my notes is who the common ancestors are between myself and this match and then what the actual relationship is so in this case Katherine and my dad are second cousins and then I just dumped the shared amount of DNA there so that I have that all in one place so that's how I structure my notes you can do them however works best for you but that works for me really well ok so then also on the new match page you're going to see her tree so this is the tree that Katherine has attached to her DNA and if I didn't know how we were related I could look at this tree and start to investigate some of these branches to see if I could figure out where we work if I scroll down past that you're going to see the shared surnames that we have in our tree I could look at just the surname she has in her tree and in a list form that way instead of in this tree view and then below that we're gonna have a map of shared ancestral birth locations so that is the basic structure of the new DNA match compare page over here on the left hand side however we have become an ancestor box so remember we started this portion of the video talking about common ancestors and in this case the common ancestor between our common ancestors between Katherine and my family is my great-great grandparents they're my dad's great-grandparents Park and Kerry so if I click this view relationship button it's going to open up a relationship chart that shows exactly the path between Katherine and my family or in this case my dad now remember I said if it's in a solid white box that means it's already in my tree so what this tells me is all this information is already in my tree and hopefully it's already in my tree because I've already verified it I've made sure that the shared amount of DNA is within range I've looked at other documentation census records and other things birth marriage and death records that are going to give me additional evidence to prove my relationship to Park and Catherine's relationship to Park and then I just use the DNA as an additional piece of evidence of that relationship and then last but not least the other thing you have here on your new DNA match page that you've always had on your DNA match page is the shared matches feature I'm not going to click on that right here on Katherine's match list because of the privacy of the people on that list but basically that's going to show all of the DNA matches that my dad and Katherine have in common where they both share more than 20 cinema organs of DNA with that match and that threshold is set because then there's a higher probability that all of those people then are also related to us on the red line and so I can start to dot those people in that color even if I haven't figured out who they are yet so that I can start to sort them or filter them into family groups so that's the power of this new match list and I'm so excited about it how are you related to all of these matches well you start with the known and you work toward the unknown in this case I know who Katherine is and so I know that she is related to us through that set of great of my great-great-grandparents which means that it is most likely that every match that we share in common with her is also related to us through either the Cowan's Park Cowan and his family or through the Inman scary Edmund and her family and as I look at that branch my family tree it helps me start to make new discoveries well that is all we have time for today hopefully this was useful information to take this little tour through the new and improved ancestry DNA match list and my methods for keeping track of all the madness it's so exciting to see new DNA not just come in every week and to continue to make new discoveries and to connect with new cousins but it can get a little bit overwhelming and I understand that with all the new matches and all of the possible discoveries to be made so hopefully these new tools give you a little bit of a better way to manage all of that information and to start to really connect it with the discoveries that you can make about yourself and your ancestors and some of those connections you can make with those living cousins until next time this is Kristy Cowan have fun climbing your family tree

Channel: Ancestry

Views: 138,769

Rating: 4.8820539 out of 5

Keywords: ancestry.com ancestry family tree family history genealogy, ancestrydna, ancestry, genealogy, finding your roots, family tree now, best dna test, dna test, dna results, surname, family tree, ancestry dna, ancestors, family search, dna ancestry test, dna discovery, dna testing, genetic testing, dna test kit, dna testing kit, dna stands for, dna kit, dna tests, dna kits, dna test kits, genetics test, ancestry com, The Barefoot Genealogist, Crista Cowan

Id: 5jhhpg83S4M

Length: 43min 53sec (2633 seconds)

Published: Sat May 25 2019